Abe, speaking after a phone call with US President Donald Trump, told reporters on Monday that they agreed more action was needed to mitigate the threat from North Korea. The comments echoed a statement over the weekend from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who called China and Russia “economic enablers” of the regime.

“We have made consistent efforts to resolve the North Korean problem in a peaceful manner, but North Korea has ignored that entirely and escalated the situation in a one-sided way,” Abe said in Tokyo.

“The international community, starting with China and Russia, must take this obvious fact seriously and increase pressure.”

The comments add to a growing rift between the world’s major powers over how to respond to Kim Jong-un’s regime. The US and its allies want China and Russia - which account for the bulk of North Korea’s trade - to cut off financial flows to the country, while Beijing and Moscow are pushing for both sides to compromise.

China’s biggest fears related to North Korea remain a collapse of Kim’s regime that sparks a protracted refugee crisis, and a beefed-up US military presence on its border.

Trump and Abe “committed to increasing economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea, and to convincing other countries to follow suit,” the White House said in a statement on Sunday. It said North Korea “poses a grave and growing direct threat” to the US and its allies in the region.

United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley announced she wouldn’t call an emergency session of the Security Council to discuss the launch because “there is no point” if it produces nothing of consequence. Earlier this month, Russia and China blocked US-led efforts to expand penalties against North Korea in a draft UN Security Council resolution condemning the July 4 missile test.

Trump has expressed periodic public frustration with Beijing over the pace of its efforts to curtail Kim. Late Saturday he again linked China’s actions to the broader US-China trade relationship.

“Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue. China could easily solve this problem!”

China’s Vice Commerce Minister Qian Keming said at a briefing on Monday that the North Korea nuclear issue should be kept separate from the US-China trade relationship.

State-run Chinese tabloid the Global Times said in an editorial on Monday Trump’s “wrong tweet” was of no help, and that Trump did not understand the issues.

“Pyongyang is determined to develop its nuclear and missile programme and does not care about military threats from the U.S. and South Korea. How could Chinese sanctions change the situation?” said the paper, which is published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily.

Abe on Monday signalled continued support for the US, on which Japan relies to provide the protection of a “nuclear umbrella.”

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga hinted at a separate press conference that similar telephone talks will be held between Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Moon is expected to have telephone talks with Trump and Abe, respectively, after he comes back from summer vacation later this week, according to South Korean presidential office sources.

Abe said on Monday that he and Trump “fully agreed” that more action was needed on North Korea. Japan last week announced new sanctions on the regime. The targets included two Chinese organisations thought to have dealings with the country, which it did not name.

The latest North Korean missile, which landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, reached an altitude of about 3,700 kilometres, according to South Korea’s military, almost 1,000 kilometres higher than the previous test. That indicates progress toward North Korea’s goal of developing a missile capable of hitting US cities. North Korea’s state media cited Kim as claiming he could now strike the entire continental US.

In a development likely to raise tensions in Japan, national broadcaster NHK showed footage that appeared to indicate the missile landing in the sea was visible from the north of the country.